Bear Grylls Survival Academy at Sani Resort, Greece

Endorsed sports camps are a growing feature of resorts, using a star name to draw guests onto tennis, football and survival-skills courses – but can you ever expect to see the celebrities themselves?

31 January 2024

My teenage son Alfred and I are back at Sani Resort’s Bear Grylls Survival Academy – a tent made from parachute silk, half camouflaged by undergrowth on the Halkidiki coast in mainland Greece. We’ve spent the morning roaming the woodland with our instructor Georgios and a loose herd of small children and their parents, finding suitable branches for fire-making, whittling sticks into arrows for protection, and learning the basics of outdoor survival. Sitting under the canvas on logs, striking flints to send showers of sparks onto kindling, there’s a sudden flurry of activity at the entrance. It’s Bear Grylls himself, who strides in wearing his own-brand blue hiking snood, hunkers down and starts helping a young boy with his flint. There’s an awestruck moment, then he takes to the floor, answering questions. “The qualities you need to survive? Quiet courage, kindness – because you could be spending a lot of time with people in distress – and ultimately, never give up, never say die.”

Of course, it may not be that surprising that adventurer and TV presenter Grylls should turn up at a survival academy named after him. However, he has several around the world, from a flagship site in the Scottish Highlands to one in the Dubai desert – and a busy media career, not to mention his duties as the UK’s Chief Scout. This is his first time at the Sani Academy, and he’s using the trip to check over the teaching program and experience the landscape for himself. “This has a really versatile terrain, with forest, coastline and dunes, but more importantly, it has families,” he says. “Some of our survival courses are very intense, but we’ve tried to make this accessible, to give people a taster over a couple of hours. It’s about doing something outside together as a family, having fun and learning skills, which is not just a sport or dependent on a device.”

In an era when children play outside far less than previous generations, with detrimental effects on health, mental wellbeing, and social skills, this is an admirable goal. There’s an ongoing boom in survival tourism, with reports indicating that in 2023, 59 percent of travelers went on wilderness trips, motivated by a desire to learn new skills with friends or family, and inspired by TV shows such as SAS: Who Dares Wins and Alone. Grylls has played a major part in this, with shows such as Running Wild– in which he teaches survival skills to guests including Ben Stiller, President Obama, and Natalie Portman – and Man vs Wild, one of the most-watched shows in the world.

At the camp in the Sani Resort, it’s more a case of Primary School Child vs Wild, though the next day I take Alfie on a private bushcraft session with Georgios. These are aimed at older children without parental supervision and can be spread over several days, accumulating skills such as water and food-collecting, concealment and stellar navigation, and primitive hunting, including axe throwing and archery. We learn to tie the half-hitch and reef knots, practicing repeatedly on sticks and trees, then put our skills into practice by constructing a snare trap – tying and hoisting up a log as a counterweight and carefully digging the trip-wire into the sandy earth. Pretending to be a curious rabbit and triggering it is enormous fun – the log crashing down and the noose hurtling skyward. “If we wanted to catch a person, we’d need to use a counterbalance three times the weight of an adult,” Georgios tells my wide-eyed son.

There’s no sign of Grylls this time, but Georgios is an encouraging and able presence, bringing together his experience as a teacher and as an army reservist. Meeting the TV adventurer brought a frisson of celebrity excitement for the families gathered here, a spark of Chief Scout motivation. Yet, it’s the regular Academy team who establish the core learning and gradually build skill sets over time. Mind you, if you go down to the woods in Greece one day, you never know – that rustling in the bushes might just be a Bear.